Our Hangout

Footnote to all prayers

A footnote to all prayers is a poem by C.S. Lewis regarding prayer and how our prayer in reality misses the mark of who God is because it is wrapped up in who we think God - and ultimately, what we think God is, is usually off...but God takes those prayers, however off they may be and draws them to who he really is. You might have to read it a few times (I did), it's worth it...

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

Note: Phaedius was a classical Greek sculptor famous for his majestic sculptures of the gods.